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Case Study: Improving citizen engagement through a cloud-based land records management system

Josh LaRussa is the Register of Deeds Clerk for Chester County, South Carolina. He runs a lean operation and is the only county employee who registers deeds, although he has cross-trained others to cover for him in case he is unavailable. About two years ago, Avenu’s Clearview GRIDS software system started to make Josh’s job easier. GRIDS is a cloud-based record-indexing solution that delivers functionality and peace of mind to those responsible for maintaining all current and historic land records for a county.

Learn what life was like for the Chester County Clerk’s Office before Clearview GRIDS, and how this solution transformed their office.

Following the transformation, Josh LaRussa stated, “Our citizens are happy with the convenience of being able to search online which has saved our staff considerable time and effort.”

Chester County, SC Clerk’s Office

Case Study: Digitizing 185 years of Records for the Monroe Co. Coroner’s Office

Nestled in the Poconos, 90 miles from New York City, the historic county has seen significant growth over the last couple decades. Pennsylvania also has one of the longest record retention requirements for coroner’s offices. Storing, preserving, and accessing these documents has become a logistical challenge. The county needed to rent more space to accommodate the additional 1,700 records a year, these documents were subject to decay, and it could take weeks to access them. When Tomas Yanac, Jr. was elected as the county coroner in 2017, he saw this problem and new they needed to digitize county records.

In the Spring of 2021, the coroner’s office found out that Avenu’s Digital Processing Services team was already scanning documents for other departments in the county. They jumped at the opportunity to utilize the DPS services, and the process began.

Avenu digitized roughly 481,000 pages and 31,650 case files. This included historical documents dating back to 1837 that had to be handled with care. All these documents were preserved so that they could be searched and accessed digitally. Now when members of the public need files, they can accessed in seconds instead of weeks without any risk of damage to the documents.

Learn the steps taken to digitize almost a half million pages, and how this transformed how the coroner’s office serves the public.

Monroe County, PA Coroner’s Office

CASE STUDY: The Paperless Initiative

How a Countywide Project Tackled over 14 Million Paper Records and Entered the 21st Century

Monroe County, PA was founded in 1836, is the home of the Pocono Mountains and is a mere 76 miles from New York City. Like all local governments, Monroe County is required to keep detailed records of everything from land grants and property deeds to court filings and tax data. These documents provide vital information and are an indispensable resource for both government employees and constituents.

Simple enough at first, but as time marches forward Monroe County has grown along with its population and court cases, which means that the number of records that need to be preserved has grown EXPONENTIALLY. The County had thousands of boxes of files overflowing in multiple physical storage locations across six different buildings.

This made retrieval of documents an additional challenge and required going to an off-site location, looking down long rows of files stored on shelves, and sifting through boxes to locate the desired file.

Some of these paper artifacts are 100 years old. Over time, paper experiences deterioration that occurs from usage, sunlight, oxidation, mold and storage. Even ink was not engineered to last 100 years. Fast forward to present times where counties across the country are facing insufficient storage and the cost of archiving paper records is a growing issue coupled with the need for immediate anywhere access.

Ultimately, Monroe County’s challenge was to efficiently preserve records for long-term use, being able to easily access records while reducing storage requirements, provide a disaster recovery plan while staying on budget.

Learn the steps taken to tackle over 14 million paper documents and create a digital archive for the county.

Monroe County, Pennsylvania